Alfie (1966)
1966 Lewis Gilbert drama with Michael Caine breaking the fourth wall as a London womanizer facing the cost of his lifestyle. The film depicts Alfie Elkins, a young London chauffeur who treats women as conquests instead of as people.
Director: Lewis Gilbert
Lewis Gilbert directed You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker, the three Bond films that pushed the series furthest toward spectacle. The volcano lair, the supertanker that swallows submarines and the space station are all his, and they set the scale the franchise has periodically had to retreat from.
His non-Bond work is completely different in register. Alfie, Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine are small British films about people talking honestly about their lives, and Alfie in particular was startling for 1966.
The two halves of his filmography look like different directors, which is a fair description of what a working British director’s career actually looked like.
